The muted patter of rain drifted in through the window. The storm had weakened, though it had yet to pass, and within the biting cold of the night, the two men regarded each other with guarded eyes.
"You..." Red Falcon hesitated, uncertainty flickering across his face. "You've been Corroded?"
Among the senior knights, Red Falcon was arguably the least qualified. Once nothing more than a street thug from the Lower District, he had risen only because Burrow had taken a chance on him. Joey, by contrast, had been born into the Joshua family, a bloodline that had hunted demons for generations. Every generation of the family sent a handful of its own into the Bureau of Purge. He had grown up knowing monsters—not merely how they fought, but how they thought.
He understood both himself and his enemies.
That was why he had reached his conclusion so quickly.
Compared to demons, human beings were pitifully fragile. Their sole advantage lay in one thing alone—the fragile thread of reason that had not yet succumbed to madness.
"...That nightmare..."
Images of the children flashed across Joey's mind. The endless procession of ghostly figures. It had not been coincidence. Of that, he was certain.
He had been Corroded.
"I had a nightmare," Joey murmured. "Or... perhaps it was a hallucination."
"Hallucinations are one of the symptoms of Corrosion, aren't they? That's why that damned thing started screaming."
Red Falcon glanced toward the enormous Geiger Counter behind him. The machine was astonishingly sensitive, capable of detecting even the faintest residue of demonic contamination. Unfortunately, it was far too massive to move.
Joey said nothing further.
Without realizing it, he slowly wrapped his arms around himself. His gaze sank into darkness, as though he had wandered somewhere no living soul should ever tread.
Red Falcon noticed.
He hesitated.
Then he asked the question anyway.
"You saw them again... didn't you?"
Joey nodded with painful reluctance.
No words followed.
"Joey," Red Falcon said quietly, "you need psychological treatment."
"You mean going back to Black Mountain Hospital?" Joey answered without hesitation. "I'd rather die than return to that damned place."
"It isn't the hospital you're afraid of."
Red Falcon's voice softened.
"You're afraid of yourself. You're afraid that once you walk back through those doors, everything buried in your past will come back with you."
He paused before continuing.
"Joey... I may have joined the Bureau halfway through, but honestly? Fighting demons isn't all that different from brawling with gangs in the Lower District. Some things are unavoidable. We're just gears inside a machine far larger than ourselves. None of us gets to decide what that machine does."
"You shouldn't blame yourself for those children's deaths."
His expression darkened.
"Besides... Gawain killed them. Not you."
Joey stubbornly shook his head.
Pain twisted across his face.
"No... it wasn't like that, Red Falcon."
"You weren't there."
"Sometimes... simply standing there and watching is a sin."
A warm sensation spread across his sleeve.
Only then did Joey realize he had injured himself during his earlier loss of control. His elbow had been split open, blood slowly soaking into the white fabric.
His breathing hitched.
Almost frantically, he tore away the bloodstained cloth and flung it across the room as though casting away some hideous creature.
His condition had deteriorated badly.
The fact that he had not drawn his folding knife and turned it against himself already spoke volumes about the strength of his remaining self-control.
Red Falcon watched him with quiet sorrow.
He understood.
Fighting demons always demanded payment.
Pain was the least of those prices.
The true cost was almost always paid by the mind.
No amount of protective equipment, no length of rehabilitation, could completely erase Corrosion. Sooner or later it seeped into the cracks of a fragile will, nurturing invisible wounds that eventually blossomed into psychological disorders. That was why the Bureau of Purge never judged retirement by age, but by mental stability.
Joey's scar had manifested as an obsessive aversion to blood.
Strictly speaking, it wasn't germophobia.
He simply could not bear the sight of blood splashed across his own body.
Ever since that incident, he had become this way.
And he was far from unique.
Burrow, for instance, never allowed himself to be separated from a weapon. His beloved revolver—Death Knell—never left his side.
There were countless others.
Sometimes Red Falcon even suspected Lloyd's obsessive hatred of demons was itself another symptom of Corrosion.
Demons never created weakness.
They merely found the cracks already present within a soul...
...and widened them until they consumed everything.
With a helpless sigh, Red Falcon lowered himself beside Joey.
When all was said and done, the Bureau of Purge was little more than a gathering of broken minds.
Black Mountain Hospital?
That was simply where the broken were sent when they could no longer pretend otherwise.
And patients rarely wished to return to the asylum.
"Joey," Red Falcon said gently, "you need help."
"At the very least... you need to calm down."
But Joey never heard him.
His eyes remained fixed on the empty space ahead.
There was nothing there.
Yet faint voices echoed through the silence.
Gawain's voice.
Once...
Joey had served beneath him.
Until that day.
After everything that happened, he had begged for reassignment back to Old Dunling, where he had remained ever since.
"I just killed their parents."
"The weapons were right beside them."
"For all we know, they were hiding demons too."
That was what Gawain had said.
In his hands rested a thermite rifle still glowing from relentless fire. Molten thermite rounds punched through one child's skull after another. Rivers of burning metal poured over young faces, hardening into grotesque masks of steel.
The children lay piled together with their parents.
Within that dark, blood-soaked room, the bodies rose like a grotesque hill.
Even now...
Joey could almost hear their crying.
"You're not cut out for this work, Black Phoenix."
Gawain had watched Joey retching uncontrollably.
"We're at war with demons."
"There is no room for mercy."
"No room for sympathy."
"No room for useless emotions."
"We don't even need our humanity."
"That bastard..."
Joey growled through clenched teeth.
His trembling hand seized a vial of Florend Solution and drove the injector into his arm.
As the drug flowed through his veins, the violent shaking gradually subsided.
He inhaled desperately, each breath ragged, like a man who had just survived a battlefield.
"No..."
"It wasn't that..."
He forced himself to push those memories away.
The past was over.
He searched through every recent encounter, reconstructing every detail with the precision expected of a senior knight.
When...
When had the Corrosion begun?
Fragments of memory scattered like shattered glass before slowly overlapping.
Then...
In the middle of a torrential downpour...
The pale cathedral emerged once more.
"James..."
"James Moriarty."
The unfamiliar name escaped his lips.
"Red Falcon..."
Joey suddenly seized his companion by the collar.
His bloodshot eyes burned with desperate intensity.
"That doctor."
"There's something wrong with that doctor."
"The doctor?" Red Falcon frowned.
Joey's reaction had become frighteningly violent.
Even with both hands, Red Falcon struggled to pry him away.
The nightmare had returned.
"He..."
"That doctor!"
The ghostly white chapel.
The bizarre mutual-aid society.
Looking back now, every detail about that place had been unnaturally absurd.
"He's..."
"He's from Black Mountain Hospital..."
"There's something wrong with him..."
Joey repeated the words again and again.
The agony tearing through his mind only deepened.
Eventually the sentences dissolved into meaningless whispers.
His strength left him.
His body collapsed.
Darkness claimed him.
"Lloyd Holmes has disappeared."
Inside a warmly lit office, Samuel delivered his report to the man seated behind the desk.
Anthony's expedition to Old Dunling had never consisted solely of the demon hunters everyone could see.
Long before his arrival, another group had already infiltrated the city.
Hidden.
Watching.
Waiting.
"Our embedded agents searched his residence and every place he was likely to appear," Samuel reported. "Nothing."
Anthony continued reading the documents before him without lifting his head.
"Has the Bureau hidden him?"
"We can't say."
"We still lack the ability to penetrate the Bureau itself."
Samuel paused.
"Of course... it's also possible he fled. Old Dunling's rail network reaches every corner of Ingervig."
"Fled?"
Anthony slowly shook his head.
"I don't believe Mr. Lloyd Holmes is the sort of man who runs."
His thoughts drifted back to the conference room.
To Lloyd's fury.
At the time, that rage had shaken everyone present.
Anthony himself had believed Lloyd might erupt into violence at any second and slaughter everyone in the room.
Only afterward had he understood.
It had all been theater.
A calculated bluff.
Lloyd was a hunter burning with fury, battered and wounded beyond measure, yet refusing to let anyone see weakness.
"As for the Bureau..." Anthony continued, "...our conversation accomplished exactly what we intended."
"It should have shown Mr. Holmes that an organization as enormous as the Bureau of Purge can never truly be trusted."
"Machines of that size don't stop for the sake of a single individual."
He smiled faintly.
"I imagine he's hiding somewhere within Old Dunling."
"Watching us."
"Waiting."
"And when the opportunity comes..."
"He'll leap from the shadows and tear out our throats."
Samuel frowned.
"Should we send the hidden agents to eliminate him?"
"No."
Anthony rejected the suggestion instantly.
"They remain our final card."
"Moving now would only alert the enemy."
"We need Lloyd Holmes alive."
"His value is... considerably greater than it appears."
Samuel still could not understand Anthony's intentions.
Or perhaps...
The intentions of the New Pope himself.
Anthony was the Pope's sharpest blade.
Everything he did represented the Pope's will.
"But aren't we searching for the Book of Revelation?" Samuel asked.
"We are."
"But we have no trail."
"According to the intelligence exchanged with the Bureau, Lawrence is dead."
"Killed by Mr. Holmes."
Anthony folded his hands.
"Bishop Lawrence orchestrated the Night of Divine Descent."
"No one knows how many years he spent preparing it."
"Nor how long he possessed the Book of Revelation."
"That book contained forbidden knowledge..."
"Knowledge even the Gospel Church chose to erase from history."
"And yet..."
"He died."
"He was killed by Holmes."
Anthony finally raised his eyes.
For the first time, genuine concern could be seen within them.
"The Bureau never revealed exactly what happened on that battlefield."
"But one fact remains."
"Given everything we know..."
"Lloyd Holmes should never have been capable of defeating Lawrence."
"And yet Lawrence is dead."
"Holmes survived."
"Without so much as a scratch."
He fell silent.
Then spoke the thought that had lingered in his heart.
"...Perhaps."
"...That was the power of the False Holy Grail."
Samuel froze.
No one truly understood what the False Holy Grail could do.
Few even knew what it looked like.
"Lawrence was our only lead to the Book of Revelation."
"Now he's gone."
"And yet inferior Secret Blood continues to appear."
Anthony's eyes narrowed.
"It seems..."
"Someone else has entered the game in Lawrence's place."
Silence settled between them.
Finally Anthony exhaled.
"Enough."
"The situation has become complicated."
"So complicated..."
"...that even I'm no longer certain of the right move."
"Until His Holiness issues new orders..."
"We maintain the status quo."
Then another thought occurred to him.
"What of our hidden agents?"
Samuel answered immediately.
"They've successfully blended into Old Dunling."
"And one of them has done exceptionally well."
"He's even infiltrated Black Mountain Hospital."
Anthony showed no surprise.
"I expected as much."
"His Authority is perfect for infiltration."
A faint smile spread across his face.
He knew that power better than anyone.
The New Pope had once used that very Authority to bathe the Seven Hills in blood.
Even as they died...
None of the victims had understood why.
"But..."
Samuel hesitated.
"He's difficult to control."
"Considering... what he's done before..."
Anthony merely smiled.
"As long as the value outweighs the risk..."
"...that's enough."
"Just like the Bureau's attitude toward Mr. Holmes."
His confidence never wavered.
He lowered his gaze to the document that had rested on his desk for what seemed like an eternity.
For a long while...
He simply stared.
Then...
A smile slowly returned.
"Samuel."
"Take the hunters out."
"Let them see the city."
Samuel blinked.
"Go sightseeing?"
"I came here prepared to die."
"But instead of bloodshed..."
"All we've had are negotiations."
"So this is how giants wage war."
"If words can solve it..."
"No one wants blood."
Anthony chuckled softly.
"This is Old Dunling."
"The heart of our enemy."
"The forefront of the world."
"Seeing more of it can only help."
Samuel sighed.
"It feels..."
"...like entertainment before the execution."
"Perhaps."
Anthony reached for the dossier once more.
"We may all die soon enough."
"This Lloyd Holmes..."
"...is surrounded by more mysteries than even he realizes."
The file had arrived in secret from the Seven Hills several days after Anthony entered Old Dunling.
Inside were only a handful of hastily written notes.
Along with several black-and-white photographs.
The photographs captured half-burned documents.
Most of the details had been destroyed, but one image clearly revealed the outline of a roster.
Another preserved a little more.
Several official seals remained visible.
Beneath them...
Blurred words could still be read.
Project: Scabbard Covenant
Executor: Lloyd Medici...
Anthony's expression darkened.
His brows slowly drew together.
Something had surfaced—
Something far beyond anyone's calculations.
Something capable of shattering the fragile balance of the entire game.